Chicken Marsala

So I made this Chicken Marsala last week before heading to the beach, and it was pretty delicious. I found it on Pinterest because of its pretty picture and turns out it is from Saveur, a magazine that I can't really afford. Today I focused on Secured Transactions [still a day behind on Kaplan's schedule] and it was pretty straightforward but also awful since I never took that class in law school. Anyway, this chicken marsala- and the beautiful pics that came from it- really make me feel better about missing like 10 out of 24 questions on that checkpoint quiz...

Pound chicken flat- they recommend to a quarter inch thick, but that seems impossible with my tools.
Dredge chicken in flour and spices, heat butter and olive oil, cook about two minutes on each side. Remove
Add a bit more butter, saute mushrooms until golden, take em out and put them on the warm plate with the chicken.

I pretty much followed the recipe by Saveur. I didn't add very much of the flour that it calls for to thicken the sauce, but I also did not measure the flour that I dredged my chicken in, so I had kind of a lot leftover. I probably could have pounded the chicken a little thinner too, but the neighbors might have called the cops since I used a heavy-ish pot instead of a meat mallet [silly unnecessary thing to buy, but I will take one if you're making a list of potential gifts for me]. Of course, I subbed yellow onions for shallots, just because it's what I had. Other than that, yeah I followed the recipe.

Add oil (or more butter), onions (finely chopped), and garlic. Cook for a bit. Add some flour. Cook for a bit.
Throw in the marsala wine and reduce...

When the consistency gets awesome (a little thicker), add the chicken and mushrooms to the mix.

Then add the noodles of your choice (these are whole wheat penne). Mix around more.

Eat.
Man, so good.
 

And that is the most beautiful post ever on Chicken Marsala. You're welcome.

Pasta Photo Essay

So maybe I didn't make this homemade pasta today, on a Tuesday, after finishing up the Contracts portion of the first few weeks, and finding out I am terrible at remedies and damages and third party beneficiaries... BUT last week, I made these noodles from a frozen ball of dough and took tons of pics. Today I made a sauce and thawed out some really-overdue-for-eating meatballs from a bag. Hey, it can't all be done by hand after a long day of studying.

The finished product, plus a few Instagram effects.

The dough is just all purpose flour and eggs. About 3/4 of a cup of flour per egg. You can add a little water or olive oil if it is too crumbly and dry. The Kitchenaid mixer makes this process a hell of a lot easier. It also makes it simpler if you have a huuge batch of dough and freeze the leftover in balls for later.

Mash the ball of dough semi-flat (you don't even need a rolling pin) and pass it through the machine after you turn it on and make sure it's on the widest setting.

Continue passing the dough through the machine, slowly decreasing the width of the setting [make it thinner].
Eventually it will get hard to manage and you may have to cut the dough in half [if, like me you started with a rather large ball of dough]

Yeah, you MAY have to cut it in half. It can get pretty long.

After running it through the cutting tool on the machine, you have the noodles! Sorry for the blur, zoomed in on the pasta.
Grandma gave me this pasta maker and it is a real gem. And so fun. And easy.

Toss the pasta with flour so it doesn't stick to itself. Let it dry on the counter [or a pan or a plate if you're cleaner than me].
You can then cook it OR freeze it for a while in ziplock bags.
[I'm not sure for how long it lasts in the freezer. You can probably Google it, but after 3 weeks it's still tasted good to me].

Salt your water really well and boil until it tastes right.
Usually no more than 5 minutes when I make my pasta on the thinnest setting, but keep an eye on it.
 

For the sauce this time, I chopped onions and garlic, sauteed them for a while in a combination of butter and olive oil [not much of either! not trying to get fat], then put a finely chopped red bell pepper [food processor fine] in the pan too and cook for a little while longer. I added about a can of petite diced tomatoes or a little more. Normally I would've made the sauce from [more] scratch, but in the interest of weeknight cooking, I added a generic brand sauce in addition to these ingredients [but not too much!]. There might also be some white wine in there. Yeah, there definitely is. Along the way, to keep the sauce from getting too thick and to build the flavors [like Anne Burrell does in her bolognese recipe], I added water and let it reduce several times. I threw in the partially thawed [though already cooked] meatballs to cook in the sauce. At the very end I added some pasta water and let the sauce simmer until it was the right consistency for my liking. Instead of tossing the pasta in the sauce like I would normally do, I just put this concoction on top, mostly for aesthetic purposes of these pictures. Before I ate it, I tossed it around of course. The cheese on top is a three cheese Trader Joe's blend, but clearly there's parmesan in there.

The completed sauce! PS: 3 meatballs = 200 calories [of this brand]. They were pretty huge.

My incredibly staged photo of my bowl of pasta.

Just heaped up there in a mound to make it beautiful.

Like I was only gonna have one meatball...

Not gonna ruin it with your average Parmesan shake cheese.

All in all this was a pretty delicious meal. I wouldn't typically taint homemade pasta with a jarred sauce, but since this pasta is so easy to make now, I don't care as much. The addition of vegetables, lots of seasoning, and wine really helped it out. It was definitely pretty and tasted good to me [and Charlie, but he'd eat anything]. Next time though...